


Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: Horrible Histories, RAF Pilot Song - Horrible Histories (Song)
Genre: Footnotes, Horrible Histories - Freeform, World War II, Yuletide 2016, Yuletide Pinch-hit, doggerel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:52:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8914225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: So to every pilotRaise a toastTo those fair few we owe the most





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makiyakinabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makiyakinabe/gifts).



 

 

[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLUyEXO-jI0)

 

**_Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines_ **

 

Nineteen forty  
Fighters flew  
Hitler sent his blackshirt crew [1]  
On bombing raid and summer sortie  
To bring their Führer wealth and glory

To war! To arms!  
Our doughty few  
Asked much, gave all, fought through and through  
Brave RAF met each alarm  
Though thick and thin and fatal harm

British peril  
German gain  
So many brave boys there were slain  
On English plain and Albion hill  
Defending freedom cost them ill

Wicked battle  
Must be won,  
Lest Europe all be overcome  
Lest all its folk be less than cattle  
Bow their heads for Nazi shackle

Our heroes these  
Unpractised fliers[2]  
Student recruits and school-boy liars  
"Fight on!" They cried, "Never appease!"  
From Hitler's hands the sky to seize

Our motley pick  
Douglas Bader[3]  
That unlikely no-legged saviour  
"Ginger" Lacey, Colin Doe, Archie, Eric  
Dick and Harry - every pilot, in the thick

Of battle fury  
Spurred by tales[4]  
Of ancient heroes, hope prevails  
God for Saint George! And also,  
Trotsky, Roosevelt too, iconic Mary

And lest I err  
Do not forget  
The men who toil and weap and sweat  
To keep the engines running fair  
And pilots fighting in the air

And tribute pay  
The fleeing few  
Our Polish friends, our Slovak crew[5],  
Their countries lost, their friends astray  
Jan, Josef[6], Stanislav[7], came to stay

Those foreign chaps  
Fought just the same  
As those who played the English game  
Shot strafed and sortied, full on in scraps,  
Although they drank not port but schnapps!

Let's not mislay  
The brave chapess[8]  
Who flew her plane with great finesse  
Atagirl, WASP, witch - aces they -  
Those women flew both night and day!

So to every pilot  
Raise a toast  
To those fair few[9] we owe the most  
Those who flew and fought and shot  
And won for us an awful lot

Na zdravie! Cheers!  
Rest easy now!  
Your task is done, you kept your vow  
The good side won, have no more fears  
Your tale in peace finds willing ears.

 

 

 **Footnotes** referring to themes and people mentioned in the original song (see [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLUyEXO-jI0)) and by the requester. Some of this historical detail ... is not entirely true. 

 

**[1] The German chaps**

The Luftwaffe and the RAF, just like the Royal Flying Corps (Britain) and the German Air Services (Germany) in the First World War, have been described, fictionalised, Pathe Cinemaised and bowdlerised as thinking of themselves as chaps with more similarities than differences, considering they spent their working hours attempting to shoot each other out of the sky with maximum prejudice. The Luftwaffe were (apparently) given to rescuing shot down RAF pilots from incensed civilians and providing brandy and biscuits before sending them off to prison camp, while the RAF were (apparently) chivalrously disinclined to shot down Luftwaffe pilots bailing out of doomed aircraft. Pilots in the RAF but not educated at public school, I suspect, probably tended to think a little differently about concepts of war, cricket, and the ability to live in one's own country without having to give funny salutes and betray one's neighbours to concentration camps.

 

**[2] Binky, Stinky, Squiffy**

I think Binky's the one with the moustache...? Image source, [_How To Grow A Successful Moustache_](http://howtogrowamoustache.com/how-to-grow-a-successful-mustache-the-importance-of-regular-grooming/).

But no, seriously, you asked about where the nicknames came from, so here goes. [Binky](http://language.rabbitspeak.com/did-you-say-binky/)'s nickname dates back to an unfortunate incident in the third remove, when the bread he was toasting on his buttocks for the senior common room accidentally caught fire. [Stinky](http://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/s,whennaturecalls.html)'s was given to him by his first flight instructor, the unfortunate recipient, in a very small and enclosed cockpit, of the entirely noxious odours emitted by the Hon. Archibald's bowels on first meeting RAF station rations. ("Brussel sprouts by the bushel!") [Squiffy](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/squiffy)'s relates to an incident early in his career involving the local fire brigade, a considerably older lady of Russian extraction, and a bottle of homemade cherry brandy served with trifle. It's fair to say the Countess carried off the honours.

 

**[3] Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader  
**

Had a spare pair of legs made for playing golf. No, really! They were shorter on one side than the other so that he could take a better swing at the ball, which could be considered either an excellent strategy or alternatively an unfair advantage. Personally, I think it said quite a lot about Mr. Bader, who definitely played to win in a plane or out of it, and was committed to escaping the officer's prison camp Colditz with such reckless enthusiasm that his own escape committee (the people responsible for makeshift maps, forged documents, civilian clothing, and all the other accoutrements of successful escape) gave up on him in exasperation. Famous for...not escaping... he was also peripherally responsible for the popularity of the board game Colditz, partly responsible for the profileration of editions of heavily redacted biography _Reach for the Sky_ in second-hand bookshops across the UK, and definitely responsible for numerous conversational gaffes resulting from his highly conservative viewpoint, notably when, post-war, on accompanying friend and Luftwaffe pilot Adolf Galland into a room full of ex-Luftwaffe pilots he exclaimed, "My God, I had no idea we left so many of you bastards alive!"

 

**[4] British Heroes**

In the original song ("Just like Robbie"), I think that'll be Robert the Bruce, notable for making friends with spiders (see also: [Shelob](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Shelob%20\(Tolkien\)/works), [Aragog](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Aragog%20\(Harry%20Potter\)/works) and [Charlotte A. Cavatica](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Charlotte%20A*d*%20Cavatica/works)) and continually failing to throw the English out of Scotland in the fourteenth century. He's beloved in Scotland for recruiting everyone with more than four inches of hair and half an inch of stubble as extras in the film _Braveheart_ , making heroic speeches of a suspiciously democratic nature just before the independence referendum, and championing guerrilla warfare, otherwise known as Glasgow on a Saturday night.

 

**[5] Polish and Czech Pilots**

Just as in the First World War, the RAF in the Second World War provided a fighting base for men and women whose countries had been overrun by the Germans, citizens who were already allied to the British by birth through the Commonwealth, or those who, like many young people everywhere, thought going to war was one of the jolliest japes ever and were therefore going to lie about their nationality and sign up. (Or, alternatively, were fiercely antagonistic to the ideals of National Socialism and wanted to save the free world. Or both.) RAF squadrons in the Battle of Britain included pilots and flight crew from fifteen countries, including the fierce, brave and romantic Poles and Czechs, Americans (often known as 'Canadians'), Australians, Canadians (real ones), New Zealanders, and one single and probably rather lonely gentleman from Jamaica. I'm glad to say that the Jamaican gentleman survived the war.

 

**[6] Josef  
**

[Josef František](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Franti%C5%A1ek), famous for shooting down many, many planes over many countries. He was Czechoslovakian, and originally flew with the Czech air force, but he was so bad at formation flying he was considered a risk to his own side. So when the RAF came calling, maybe the Czechs (then based in yet-to-be-occupied France) were all, "Oh, no, dear boy, if needs must, of course you must have our best pilot!" He was also famous for insubordination, lack of flight discipline, and quarrelling so badly with his own countrymen that despite being Czechoslovakian he flew with the French, Polish and British air forces...and the British found him so terrifying to fly with they made him fly on his own....

He looks really unhappy in all his photographs, so here's his [ Hurricane](http://pisis.eaw.page.sweb.cz/czFrantisek.htm).

 

**[7]Stanislav**

[Which](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Skalski) [Stanislav](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighter-Pilots-Call-Arms-Defending/dp/1906502765)? It's hard to say, they're all brave and blond and bonnie and gay - which is to say, _generally_ gay in a kind of doomed youth Noel Coward kind of a way, not in a Noel Coward fey kind of a way, although if we're talking about being gay and young and doomed let's just mention heroic (and handsome, and doomed) author, decorated pilot and confirmed batchelor Flight Lieutenant [Ian Gleed](http://www.historyextra.com/feature/same-side-homosexuals-during-second-world-war), rising to the occasion in his beloved Spitfire and cutting a swathe through the swooning squadrons of Fighter Command with his super big throttle. Most of the British pilots were initially, however, a little inexperienced compared to their Czech and Slovak colleagues, the Stanislavs having already fought in their home countries and in France.

This is a Stanislav.

 

 

**[8]The Chapesses**

The flying and non-flying few who braved the sky in (UK, US) unarmed flight to free up men to go and fight. I’m paticularly admiring of the Russian [Night Witches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches) (so was Stalin, although that didn’t help them get modern planes) but feel the unsung heroes of the women’s war are those who washed the dishes up. Memorably, British WAAF recruits, the women who ran the canteens, took messages, moved balsa planes across cardboard maps, drove Commodores around, appeared in RAF pilot songs, made tea, washed up ... were issued two kinds of knickers, navy blue winter wear (“Black-outs” to the gentlemen of the RAF) and paler blue summer wear (“Twilights”). Perhaps more importantly, the woman of the British ATA, plane transport, were the first in the UK to achieve government sponsored equal pay, so obviously the colour of one’s knickers _does_ matter.

**[9]Boybands and Other Tales**

Entertainment for these pilots tended to be more of the piano-in-the-pub variety, interrupted by the call to arms. Squiffy turned out to be a dab hand at _Chopsticks_ , _Knees Up Mother Brown_ , and an assortment of Edward Elgar arrangements, Elgar being a composer of whom his aged and wealthy aunt was very fond. Binky, a Harrow old boy, had a surprisingly good tenor, although everyone else became very quickly irritated with the constant repetition of, _“Never the battle raged hottest, but in it / Neither the last nor the faintest, were we!”_ , which was a little indigestible when heard every morning, wafting across the Nissan Huts during pre-dawn ablutions. Stinky, however, was absolutely notorious for a Lower Sixth play in which, in slap and lashes and a little blue number that belonged to his Housemaster’s wife, he was disconcertingly and meltingly ravishing. It was Stinky's inclination to drama, Binky's excellent voice, and Squiffy's ability to put two notes together which led to the Pilot Song, and so an excellent footnote to the history of the world was there created!

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very grateful indeed to Dr Anticant for a swift and elegant reorganisation of verse. Thank you.
> 
> makiyakinabe, happy Yuletide! I'm hoping - you mentioned a few prompts, and that you liked historic detail and a few more experimental fictional possibilities - I'm hoping you enjoy this result. I did fail at Christmas, but hope Yuletide will do instead!


End file.
